At the risk of ticking off the less RDF inclined in the group (for
which I sincerely apologize in advance) but in the interest of
perhaps making OWL more accessible to the wider SW audience familiar
with RDF, I wonder if we should consider some of the choices made in
the functional syntax.
The sort of thing I have in mind are, for example:
Currently: PropertyAssertion( a:parentOf a:Peter a:Chris ) => a:Peter
is a parent of a:Chris.
First, the order of argument would be more intuitive if it followed
the S P O pattern that the triple takes, and it might even be worth
calling this
Statement(a:Peter a:parentOf a:Chris) to maximize the parallel
Similarly, we have now
ClassAssertion( a:Person a:Peter )
This differs both from OWL 1, and from the common ordering. This
could become
InstanceOf(a:Peter a:Person )
or
TypeAssertion(a:Peter a:Person)
There are other possibilities, but I won't include a complete review
here. Rather I wanted to open up the subject to discussion.
I realize that one gets attached to names and that these changes
might be viewed as unpleasant for some in the working group. So
first, let me reassure that it is *not* my intention to offend.
Rather I am hoping that despite an initial potential distaste WG
members might consider this from the point of view of what might help
get the broadest adoption of OWL.
Regards,
Alan